To The End Of The Stars
by LastSaskatchewanSpacePirate
Summary: When Greg Lestrade was a little boy, his father used to take him out to look at the stars. The story of Lestrade, and of Sherlock. T for safety & drug use. Angst, love, and h/c. No slash: father-son relationship.


**When Greg Lestrade was a little boy, his father used to take him out to look at the stars. **Work in progress: there will be a part two and maybe three. This is the story of Sherlock and Lestrade. No slash: you could read into it if you like, but mostly father-son love. Paternal!Lestrade. T for drug use, and possible other stuff that might come later. Works well if read as a companion to my 'What You Don't Know About Greg Lestrade' but stands alone. Haelia has written a beautiful Sherlock-Lestrade fic based on my work: please check it out! It is titled 'Before Watson' and is truly beautiful.

_"A father is neither an anchor to hold us back, nor a sail to take us there, but a guiding light to show us the way."_

* * *

When Greg Lestrade is four years old his dad takes him out to look at the stars for the first time. They stand in the field for awhile, watching the beautiful night sky, and Greg is struck by the magic of it.

"Do you love me?" he asks, holding tight to his father's hand as he watches the stars.  
The hand that is grasping his tightens just a bit. "Yes." says his father. "I love you."

"How much?"

"Until the end of the stars."

Greg cranes his neck to look up at the sky. "How far do the stars go?"

"Forever." replies his father.

Greg thinks about this for a minute and it scares him, the impossibility of something beyond forever, the idea of anything beyond where the stars can reach. "How much is that?" he asks nervously, and his father replies by opening his arms and pulling him in a hug and telling him: _"This much." _And Greg relaxes because two arms held wide is a quantifiable amount and he hugs his father back and forgets about the end of the stars.

* * *

When Greg Lestrade is six years old, his best friend in all the world is Caroline Baker. She has two dark braids down her back and a smattering of freckles across her nose and they scale trees and wrestle in the grass and plan marriage in the shade of the front porch.

"When we're big." says Greg. "We will be married."

"All we'll have a big house." says Caroline.

"And a hundred kids." says Greg.

"Deal." says Caroline, and she spits on her hand and they shake on it and three years later she moves away.

* * *

When Greg Lestrade is sixteen years old, his best friend in all the world is Jimmy Keates. Jimmy helps him with his arithmetic, and Greg helps Jimmy with his science, and they play football and lie on their backs on the roof of his house and talk about life.

"In ten years time." says Greg, staring up at the clouds. "Where do you think we'll be?"  
"I know where you'll be." says Jimmy, who is lying directly beside him, but in the opposite direction so that his feet are at Greg's head and his head is at Greg's feet. "You'll have a big house and a wife and twenty kids."

"Twenty?"

"At least."

Greg laughs and Jimmy grins and they lay watching the clouds for an hour more before they have to go in for dinner and after graduation he never sees Jimmy Keates again.

* * *

When Greg Lestrade is twenty-three years old he is engaged, and he tells his fiancee that he wants children. Her name is Catherine and she is beautiful and kind and she makes him whole.

"So do I." she says, and he is greatly relived because though he loves her more than anything, that would have been the deal-breaker.

He tells her he would like to wait until they are married and that he would like two or three or even four kids, and she says that all this is fine and they are happy and one day they are married and twenty-five years later she leaves him for a PE teacher.

* * *

When Greg Lestrade is twenty-six years old he and his wife have been trying for one year to have a child.

"Maybe it is not meant to be." she says.

"No." protests Greg. "It is. We just have to keep trying."

"Maybe we should go to a doctor." she says.

Greg says yes and makes them an appointment because he wants to be a father more than anything, and always has.

* * *

When Greg Lestrade is forty-four years old he has never been a father.

He has never once taught a child to walk, to talk, to read, to drive, to play football. He has never read a bedtime story, soothed a fever, sung a nursery rhyme, bandaged a scrape. He has never been up all night tending to a crying infant, he has never helped with a science project, he has never sat a toddler in his lap and read from a book, nor held a child's hand to cross a busy road.

He does not know how it feels to hold your newborn baby in your arms for the very first time. He does not know what it feels like to look at your child and see yourself reflected in their features and their mannerisms and their heart.

He does not know what it means to love something until the end of the stars.

When Greg Lestrade was twenty-six he locked himself in the bathroom and cried for four hours without stopping after having learned that he was sterile and could not have children. His wife had given up banging on the door as well as trying to console him through the wood after the first hour and he had lay down on the linoleum floor and cried until his throat was raw and his eyes and cheeks burned and he had nothing left to cry.

She had insisted that it was not his fault and that she was not upset. They had not considered adopting because it would take too much time and too much money and Catherine had always wanted her own children. They had had no children, and Catherine had accepted that and Greg had pretended to.

By the time he is forty-four their marriage is spiralling downhill, and it occurs to him to wonder often if perhaps things would be better if they had kids. But he has learned to tuck away the _if we had kids_thoughts in the very back of his mind and not dwell on them because they hurt too greatly.

Greg Lestrade is a Detective Inspector for Scotland Yard and his work life is a blur of crime scenes and blood samples and stacks of paperwork at a big desk. He works harder than anyone in his department, staying late and starting early. He takes a short break for lunch, and two longer ones for a fag, and the rest of the time he works with efficiency and courtesy, be it in the streets or the office. He is doing what he likes best, which is helping people.

He has suspicions that his wife is not being entirely faithful – it is, after all, the duty of a DI to notice and to observe. Greg Lestrade at forty-four has had his heart broken many many times and though he notices and he observes he says nothing. He does not think he could handle it. The more he ages, the more delicate he becomes inside and he thinks one day he might break. A divorce would break him, and the thought of the look on Tobias Gregson's face is not a pleasant one. Gregson has a beautiful wife and a fifteen year old son. Lestrade has increasingly little.

Greg Lestrade rises early and goes to work. He has no children to kiss goodbye as he leaves. He works, and he takes a break to smoke, and then he works, and then he takes a break for lunch, and then he works and takes one more break to smoke and then he goes home (though sometimes he will stay late) and sometimes he will row with his wife, and sometimes she will not be there, and then he will go to bed and rise early the next morning for work.

This is the routine of his life at forty-four, and it goes on like this for some time: routine.

* * *

When Sherlock Holmes is twenty-nine years old a man is murdered in an underpass tunnel. Sherlock looks much younger than his twenty-nine: he is very thin and very pale, with long dark curls that hang about his face. He had not been able to meet that month's rent and was using the aforementioned underpass tunnel for a shelter, and the hard ground for a bed. He has no coat, and he has no shoes, but he has his cocaine – safe in a little black case that he's tucked under his shirt, against his chest.

The man is on the ground some ten feet away from Sherlock with a knife in his back. Greg Lestrade is on the team sent to investigate the murder. It's freezing cold, and he and the other inspectors grumble and complain and huddle close together. Lestrade's gaze has been drifting to Sherlock for some time. He sits at the far end of the tunnel, without coat, without shoes, watching.

When Greg Lestrade is forty-four he goes over to the young homeless man at the end of the underpass tunnel and gives him his jacket. He looks so young: gaunt and thin and shivering, his long bony arms riddled with the pockmarks of cocaine addiction. Greg finds himself compelled to do something, anything. One small act; one kindness. If just to show this young man that the world isn't yet over.

Sherlock Holmes, aged twenty-nine, allows Greg to wrap the jacket around his bony shoulders. He looks down at the offering in the half-light, noting the smell and the texture and the places where it has worn and been stained. His hands find the pockets and sift through their contents.

Data, data, data.

And as Greg Lestrade straightens up and turns back to his team, the deductions come, and he voices the first that comes to him:

"Your father lives in Dorset."

When Greg Lestrade is forty-four he exchanges phone numbers with the homeless man in the underpass tunnel who knows everything about his life from twenty seconds with his jacket, and who knows who had murdered the man lying ten feet away with a knife in his back. He asks the homeless man in the underpass tunnel if he wants to maybe come in on a different crime scene, and the man says maybe he will consider it. His phone number has a lot of sevens and ones. One day Greg will know it by heart.

Then Greg Lestrade asks the man for a name.

"Sherlock Holmes."

"Greg Lestrade." he says. When they shake hands, his wrist is so thin that Greg worries it will snap.

There are stars coming out when he leaves the underpass tunnel with his team, and as he's walking back to the car with his arms tight around himself (Sherlock has kept his jacket) he thinks of a time when he was young and held his father's hand in a wide grassy field and asked how much his father loved him.

* * *

Consulting Detective is Sherlock's idea, not his. He solves crime after crime for the Yard, and Greg loves to watch him at work: to see him delight in clues and cases, to read alibis in shirtsleeves and guilt in footprints. They call him an idiot – working with a homeless kid from an underpass tunnel – but Lestrade ignores it. He loves the way Sherlock's eyes light up when he's working, and he is struck by how very blue they are. Seeing that is worth the scorn. And no one can deny that Sherlock Holmes is a genius.

Another undeniable truth, however, is that Sherlock Holmes is a cocaine addict. Greg catches glimpses of the little black case he carries always on his person and that he guards with his life. The habit costs him all the money he has: it costs him his rent on more than one occasion. Sherlock has no problem with his sleeping on the streets – Lestrade does. They row. Sherlock refuses to give up his cocaine. Lestrade cannot stand to see such beautiful life wasted, and they row some more, until Greg's life becomes fighting at home with his wife and fighting at crime scenes with Sherlock and fighting at the Yard with his team; about Sherlock.

Not only does Sherlock Holmes use cocaine, but he is deeply involved in the trafficking of the drug. Sherlock has no money. By dealing, he makes enough to scrape by. Sherlock will not accept money from Lestrade, and point blank refuses to go to his brother, so Sherlock deals cocaine. Lestrade knows that Sherlock deals cocaine, and Lestrade does not stop it. Lestrade's teammates are very much not okay with this. _Arrest him_, is the general consensus. Sally Donovan thinks differently.

"Just let him be, Greg." she says. "Don't get involved."

But Greg cannot sit idly by. Greg cannot let Sherlock live the rest of his life out on the streets, come what may. Greg will not let him burn out and die: homeless, addicted, alone.

Sherlock Holmes needs him.

The young detective rents a shabby flat deep in the slums of London. The white paint is peeling from the walls while the floorboards age and decay. There is a small bed with thin white sheets, a closet without doors, a stove, a refrigerator, and a table and chair. Sherlock owns little: a handful of clothes and a violin. Greg spends much of this year at Sherlock's flat. He brings him cases, and he brings him food because Sherlock eats so very little, and he keeps an eye on that little black case. They sit together and smoke, and sometimes Sherlock will play his violin. Greg thinks that violin is the most beautiful thing he has ever heard. Talking is minimal, because Sherlock does not like to make small talk. Lestrade doesn't mind. Their relationship is tentative, and it remains business-oriented, but it's something, and it's nice.

One day Lestrade comes to the flat where the paint peels and the floorboards decay and finds it empty. The violin is there, and it reassures him. Sherlock would not go anywhere permanently without bringing his violin. But he does not see Sherlock for some time, and he tells himself not to be worried. Sherlock is not a creature of habit: he does what he sees fit whenever he sees fit to do it. He is a shadow, a whisper of a presence. He flits around like a bat: he might be anywhere. But the gnawing fear grows as he returns day after day to an empty flat, and Greg finds himself praying for the detective's safety.

He had not realized how accustomed he had become to the detective's presence until there was no one calling him an idiot while he worked (but Lestrade needn't take offence, because all people were) and no one to sit with him on rooftops and smoke, and no violin music to bring tears to his eyes.

And then one day Sherlock is back, and when Greg asks where he has been he gives no reply. Greg drops the subject. It is not until some time later that he will learn that Sherlock was in a hospital for a cocaine overdose.

Time passes. Greg Lestrade rises early and goes to work, and he has no children to kiss goodbye as he leaves. He works with Sherlock Holmes. Greg offers the detective a permanent position: Consulting Detective for Scotland Yard. A job. One condition applies, and the condition is that he stop using cocaine. Detox.

Mycroft Holmes is thirty-six years old when his little brother comes to him and asks for the one thing Sherlock never asks for: help. He stays at Mycroft's during the detox, and Lestrade is forbidden to visit.  
Lestrade visits anyways, and Mycroft does not ask him to leave.

The days are hell and the nights are worse. Sherlock loses what little weight he has left. He throws up constantly and soaks through his clothes with sweat. He becomes desperate and angry, confused and disoriented. He begs for his drug, and when that does not work, he threatens. He throws things. He cries. He cannot keep anything down, even tea, and he grows steadily weaker. He shakes like a leaf. He has night terrors and does not sleep. Lestrade can only hold him and pray.

It is the closest to hell that Lestrade has ever come. He often stays at Mycroft's overnight, and he spends this time holding Sherlock's head over the toilet or trying desperately to wake the detective from the horrible nightmares that plague him when he finally falls asleep. It falls to him to make sure Sherlock is eating and every day there is a fight in which Lestrade tries to force food into him and Sherlock refuses. He removes all potentially harmful instruments from Sherlock's reach, because Sherlock has learned that the easiest way to get Lestrade and Mycroft to comply is to hurt himself rather than them.

He brings Sherlock cases sometimes, cold cases, old cases, little things, treats. Sherlock's eyes light up like a child at Christmas, and both are reminded why all this will be worth it.

Sherlock spends most of his time on the couch, shivering and sulking, wrapped in a mountain of blankets and refusing food and water. He glares at Lestrade when he comes to visit, (unless he brings a case) and he rows with Mycroft more often than ever.

It is a night where Sherlock is sulking on the couch when Lestrade comes in. Lestrade gets him off the couch and into a cab, and they go for a drive. Sherlock does not try to deduce where he is being taken: he sulks on the seat of the cab. Once they have left London, however, and the concrete of the city has given way to trees and fields and hills, he looks at Lestrade and then the darkening countryside with confusion. Greg sees the curiosity flicker onto the skinny detective's features, and it makes him smile.

When the cab stops the night is dark and the fare is considerable. When Sherlock steps out of the cab Lestrade bundles him into a jacket because Sherlock is painfully thin and the air is very cold. This is a struggle, but Sherlock is too weak to struggle for long. Greg pays the fare and thanks the driver, and he takes Sherlock by one hand when he does not move and guides him off the road, out into a wide field.

They find a hillside and lie down. Lestrade does not have high hopes for this night: he imagines it will be a matter of minutes before there is a row. But the detective goes oddly quiet beside him, and when Greg turns his head to look, Sherlock is staring in silent amazement at the dark sky above: spattered with thousands upon thousands of stars.

Greg has not seen stars like this for a very long while. Outside the lights of the city, there are thousands, brilliant pinpricks of light against the canvas of black. He can see layer upon layer of them: swirls and patterns and planets – falling stars, twinkling stars, changing and shining and dancing in the dark. It makes him remember days when he was very young and his father would take him to a wide field to look up at the night sky. _Do you love me? _He thinks.

_Yes. _

_How much? _

_Until the end of the stars. _

The stars seem to go on forever here, spread out into infinity. Sherlock does not speak, and the row Lestrade waits for does not come. Time wears on, and the sky deepens beneath the milky ballet of cosmos. Greg takes Sherlock's hand in his – gently, as not to startle him, - and leads his hand to point out constellations and planets. He finds it curious that he can remember near every name. Sherlock, who always objects at being touched, simply watches.

"That's Leo." he says, pointing. Sherlock follows his finger. "The lion. You see?"

Sherlock murmurs assent. Greg turns his head to look at him from where they lay side by side. The detective's eyes are shining – the light of a thousand stars reflected in the deep blue. He is so pale that in the darkness he seems to glow. His dark curls are spread out on the grass. He looks ethereal in the starlight, otherworldly.

_How far do the stars go? _

_Forever. _

Time stands still, and yet still time passes, and when hours have gone by it seems as though less than a second has elapsed under the blanket of sky and stars. They stay on the hillside until the sky lightens, and the stars become fainter and harder to see. Lestrade dials for a cab home, and Sherlock sits up and draws his knees to his chest as he watches the sun come up. Greg remembers being small and watching stars, and it makes him wish for his father, and time when work and cocaine and divorce and sadness were grown-up things that he could not yet reach.

_How much do you love me? _

_Until the end of the stars. _

Sherlock falls asleep in the cab, and his head lolls against Greg's shoulder, which is okay. Greg can only half-wake him when they finally reach London, and he ends up carrying him out of the cab and up the stairs to Mycroft's flat, which is also okay. Sherlock sleeps for a couple hours, and he does not have nightmares.

There are nights like that – peaceful. Hopeful. There are silent safe spots within the hurricane. Just enough for you to let your guard down and imagine everything will be alright. Greg learns that this is true with a failing marriage as well. There are nights when it seems as though it might turn round. Greg goes to work cheerful, if tired, confident that the worst of the detox is over or ending.

It is not. The hurricane picks up again, and violently. Most of the physical symptoms are fading, but Sherlock is desperate, disoriented, terrified. For two terrifying days, he loses track of who he is. He becomes an animal – scrabbling for grip with failing claws, caged, and confused. He huddles in corners and lashes out at touch. These are days that Sherlock will not remember well after the detox, and Lestrade thanks God for small blessings.

He, however, will never forget them: they are permanently ingrained in his memory, just as the long scar on his left arm will stay forever upon the skin. The scar is not Sherlock's fault. Lestrade had ignored all advice and tried to touch him, and Sherlock's reaction had been in a feverish defence.

Sometimes people will ask about the scar. Sometimes Sherlock will. Greg says that he had crashed his motorbike. Sherlock will tell him that it looks like a knife wound, but Sherlock does not remember picking up that knife and he takes Lestrade at his word.

All storms end, and this one will too, in time. When Sherlock Holmes is thirty years old, he is off the coke. There is no bliss, no relief, no little black case. But he has a job now.

"I'm proud of you." Lestrade says one night, as they're sitting on the roof of Bart's under the stars. The glowing tips of their cigarettes are the only light besides those of the sprawling city around them and the stars above. The smoke wreathes above their heads and their breath ghosts in the cool air. Sherlock just looks at him, his eyes catching the light. Sherlock will never admit that that alone makes being clean worth everything. He loves that Lestrade is proud of him.

Lestrade sighs and looks up at the sky. The smoke curls above them, drifting up to the stars. _Do you love me?_ He thinks.

"We ought to quit this too, you know." he says. "Bad for the lungs."

Sherlock snorts and he does not press. Baby steps. One addiction at a time.

* * *

Greg Lestrade is forty-five now, and his best friend in all the world is Sherlock Holmes. Once he had had flocks and flocks of friends, but his popularity has waned and the old friends which he once called his best have moved on where he cannot follow. They try, but they have gone past him: they have wives and families and steady jobs and car insurance and they talk about children and daycare and tuition fees and Greg, who stands still, is left behind.

So it's Sherlock his best friend, and things have gone the wrong way round now, and Greg starts to need Sherlock more than Sherlock needs him, but neither of them mind. His marriage is still on the rocks, and he has no children and his life is a disaster area of emotional baggage and crumbling dreams, but... it is not so bad anymore. Sherlock helps, somehow. Sherlock makes it better. He cries less, and he drinks less, and he hurts less, and he smiles often. Smiles feel strange and alien on his face and they make his muscles ache, but it's good. Sherlock makes it good.

He visits Sherlock often, and Sherlock visits him. He brings crimes to Sherlock, and he cuts Sherlock's hair and teaches him to drink and to play checkers and football and he has tea with his brother and Sherlock teaches Lestrade to play chess and he writes Lestrade a song on the violin and solves him countless cases. They get into scrapes sometimes, and barely but always come away with their lives, and the adrenaline rush is like being reborn. Lestrade has a sense of belonging for the first time – of finding place in a world he had lost himself in, and it is very nice indeed.

They are partners, and they look out for one another. "I got your back." promises Lestrade on more than one occasion, and he says so with such honesty that it does not occur to Sherlock to doubt his word. Greg has vowed to protect Sherlock at all cost – to give him the love and the shelter that the world never has. To keep him safe: this is, after all, the duty of an officer. To protect.

So when one night he finds Sherlock unconscious on the floor of his apartment, overdosed on cocaine, Lestrade's first thought is: _I've failed you. _

He remembers that it was raining. He remembers being pleased because he had not seen Sherlock for a few days time. There had been no cases, a dry spell for crime to contrast the London weather, and Sherlock had been dreadfully bored. Greg had been excited to see the look on his face when he handed him the shiny folder in his hand detailing the double homicide that had occurred last night. Sherlock has taught him to be excited for double homicides. Perhaps this is not a good thing.

Sherlock ignores his phone, which was not a strange occurrence, so Greg goes to his flat. The door is locked but Lestrade has a key, just as Sherlock has a key to Lestrade's place. They come and go as they please. Greg imagines the detective must be off sulking, or locked in his bedroom with an experiment. Perhaps he is out in the rain, and Greg remembers vividly hoping that the detective had remembered to bring his coat – the daft idiot was going to catch his death of cold one day. When he had opened the door, the coat had been on the hook and Greg had cursed Sherlock under his breath for being stupid and going out without it -

And then he had seen Sherlock lying on the floor.

He will remember always how pale he was. Greg had expected to see blood pooled around his head: all the blood from his body. This would explain, perhaps, how very white he was. Sherlock is pale at the best of times: this Sherlock has skin that is almost translucent. But there is no blood. Lestrade's eyes settle on the needle lying a few feet from Sherlock's limp hand.

Cocaine overdose.

And all that Lestrade can think as he dials 999 with shaking fingers is that it is his fault, it is all his fault. Greg had not called or visited or emailed and this is the result. Sherlock is horrifyingly light in his arms, like he weighs nothing at all. He will remember this too, how very small and fragile the detective was. The pulse is weak, and Lestrade has convinced himself that Sherlock is dying in his arms and that it is his fault. He had killed him. He feels lost again – a four year old looking up at stars and trying to understand forever. _How far is it?_ He wants to ask, but Sherlock lies still in his arms and cannot answer. He has no one else to answer the question.

This is Sherlock's worst overdose, and certainly the worst that Lestrade has witnessed, but it is also his last. He comes close to death, but he does not die. Time heals all wounds, or at least most, and Sherlock recovers and does not touch the cocaine again, and they move on. Sherlock does not look him in the eye for some time after the incident and it takes Lestrade this time to realize that he is ashamed.

"Hey." he says gently to the detective. "It's okay. It's hard. Things happen. I forgive you. Just... just don't do it again."

Sherlock never does.

* * *

Time goes on, and rain turns to snow, or at least very nearly. It has not yet snowed over London, but the winter season is well underway and Greg waits in eternal anticipation for that first snowfall. Greg adores winter, and Greg adores snow, and is startled to learn that Sherlock despises the season. Perhaps it is not so surprising – Sherlock is so small and so slight that the cold cuts right through him. But Sherlock has a magnificent coat – a gift to him from Mycroft, and Sherlock has nice leather gloves and a blue scarf that Lestrade had bought for him. When Sherlock goes out Lestrade stays close by him, and the cold of the season becomes less noticeable.

Holidays are approaching, and the excitement at the Yard is infectious. The atmosphere is light and cheery, and decorations cover every available surface. There is talk of a Christmas party. They make bets on when the first snow will appear. The streets are crowded with shoppers and carollers, and the city feels like warmth and family and magic. His wife agrees to a tree – for many years she has been protesting the sentiment: they have, after all, no children to enjoy it. But this is one of the lulls in the storm where their crumbling marriage seems to be turning around, and Catherine puts up with Greg's obsessive decorating and holiday cheer.

Greg buys presents for everyone he knows, which Sherlock finds a useless practice, and Greg buys Sherlock a gift, which Sherlock protests about, and Greg sings holiday carols at the top of his lungs and seems to be forever in a good mood, which annoys Sherlock to no end. Greg attaches a holiday wreath to Sherlock's front door and calls him a Scrooge in between verses of 'Silent Night.'

When they smoke together their hands fumble, frozen, on the lighter, and their breath is as visible as the smoke from their cigarettes. Sherlock, thin, ever-cold Sherlock, stays pressed tight to Lestrade at all times, which suits the DI just fine. The season wears on, and the Yard gives up on the idea of snow, but Greg maintains that one of these days it is coming. Greg yells at Sherlock's landlord – a tall, seedy, unpleasant man with a pinched face - about the drafty windows and the leaking roof and the faulty heating. They solve a triple homicide and a diamond heist. Greg wraps presents and makes cocoa. Sherlock learns and plays Christmas songs on the violin for him. He calls his dad and says 'Happy Christmas' and asks "How much do you love me?" before he hangs up and his dad replies "To the end of the stars." Catherine kisses him under the mistletoe in their front hall and they have sex for the first time in a long time, and Greg thinks that maybe everything is going to turn out alright.

And then there comes a December night no different from any other, where it is cold but it has not yet snowed. Greg is out on a case with Sherlock, and the adrenaline in his veins keeps him warmer than any coat, any scarf. He has bet Anderson that tonight will be the night it will finally snow, and he glances at the sky every so often, just to see if it has started yet.

On the flip side, he does end up winning ten pounds.

He also takes the bullet that their criminal sends directly at Sherlock's chest and collapses to the ground with blood soaking through his shirt. Greg can recall seeing the criminal collapse, dead, as Sherlock sends three bullets into his chest. He remembers Sherlock dropping to his knees beside him and begging him to stay awake as he presses down on the wound. There are stars in the sky above him.

_How much do you love me? _

_Until the end of the stars. _

He tries to ask how far the stars go, but he is not sure that his mouth is moving with the words. His lips taste like blood, and it is very cold where he is lying. The pain is very distant, like it is someone else's pain, and he is only watching. Sherlock is speaking to him, but he can barely make out the words. He cannot move, and he lies where he is, watching the sky above him.

That's when it starts to snow.

And just like that, Greg Lestrade has a bullet in his spine that paralyses him from the waist down. Just like that, Greg Lestrade is forty-five years old and a paraplegic in a wheelchair.

Just like that, his world is over.

Lestrade's job – Lestrade's life – is not wheelchair accessible. He is helpless, useless. He has nothing. He can no longer control his own body. He tells his legs to move and they do not. He is broken. He feels cold inside, colder than he has ever been out on the streets during the winter. He is useless to Sherlock like this: he cannot run or fight or bring cases. He cannot protect. Sherlock does not come to visit, and Greg does not expect him to.

Greg does not regret it. He never will. Greg did what he should have done: he protected Sherlock. But that does not mean that he is not angry. It does not mean that he is not terrified.

It does not mean that he doesn't cry.

Denial does not last long: Greg has been taught all his life to search for evidence to find fact, and the evidence of his paralysis is clear: he cannot feel his legs. He cannot move them at all. He will never again walk to work, run after Sherlock, play football. The next stage is anger, and this lasts considerably longer. He screams at the world that has shunted him aside, screams at the things above him that he cannot reach, at the life that once was his and that he can no longer have. He is trapped within the walls of a hospital. He eats hospital food and he uses hospital equipment and breathes hospital air and looks out hospital windows at stars that seem even further away.

Hospital food is disgusting, and Dimmock, the rookie, brings him proper food with proper cutlery and tells him that it's okay, that his job, his life is not yet over. Greg puts the proper knife through his leg to show him exactly what his life is now. When the blade goes through his flesh he feels nothing at all. He is rewarded for this with an extended hospital stay and a psych exam. Iain Dimmock does not visit him again, and Sherlock still has not come.

Greg begins to wish that the bullet had killed him.

After anger comes grief. He lies in bed with legs that do not work and cries for a life he cannot have and a pain he does not feel. This is his life as a cripple. His wife is devoted to him after the accident. She promises him that it will be difficult, but that they will make it. These are empty words, and he can feel their emptiness. Greg is a disappointment and a burden: an accident. He has never felt such a dark despair, nor such an intense frustration. The world becomes dark and it hurts to exist. On Christmas Day he calls the father that taught him the names of all the stars from his wheelchair and he cries into the phone for a very long time.

He waits for the final stage: acceptance, but it does not come. Sometimes he can pretend still that it was all a dream, a nightmare. There is a dark anger that grows in his chest, and he welcomes it: it is nice to have something he can feel. He is more lost than he has ever been. He is fumbling blindly in the dark of his life with nothing to hold onto. He cannot move, he cannot walk, he cannot work. His back is broken. It is over. His life has become the nightmare. But never once does he regret taking that bullet.

And then, when Greg Lestrade is forty-five years old, a surgeon from Los Angeles, sent by a faceless organization that screams _Mycroft_, comes to London and offers him an experimental surgical procedure.

Greg Lestrade has nothing left to lose, and he agrees.

He wakes up in a hospital bed with Sherlock and the surgeon watching him. The lights are very bright in the room – it makes his eyes hurt. He feels dizzy from the drugs, and the world is a haze. He wonders if he is hallucinating Sherlock's presence, but no, he can feel Sherlock's hand on his, and it's firm and solid and warm.

He can feel his legs.

He cannot yet run or fight or bring cases, or indeed even walk. But he can feel his legs again, and tears of intense relief and pure joy find their way down his cheeks before he can help himself. He remembers crying – sobbing – for a very very long time, and never once does Sherlock's hand leave his. He cries until he wears himself out, and he goes to sleep, and when he wakes Sherlock is still by his bedside and his life as a cripple is over, and he can feel his legs again. When he lifts his leg, it moves. When he curls his toes, they curl. When he hits his leg with his fist, it hurts. His back aches, and it is the most beautiful feeling in the world. Greg will never take pain for granted again. Pain is bliss. Pain is a miracle.

Sherlock wears the same look that he had after the last overdose. Greg recognizes it now. Guilt. Sherlock feels guilty. Greg swears up and down to the detective that is not his fault. He tells him that it was his choice, and that he would not take it back for anything. He tells him empty comforting words until he sees the guilty look fade from Sherlock's bright blue eyes. But he does not tell Sherlock a single lie. Greg does not regret it. He would do it again in a heartbeat. He would do it even if there had been no experimental procedure, no miracle. Greg would protect him: this is his job.

* * *

When Greg Lestrade is forty-five he has to re-learn how to walk. This is just as frustrating as being wheelchair-bound, and no therapy, no exercise, no rehab or support group makes it easier. It is slow, painful, hopeless, humiliating. Greg is no use to Sherlock without use of his legs, and yet the detective does not leave. He stays with Greg at all times, uncharacteristically patient and kind. He follows Greg to therapy sessions, and he holds his hands and guides him through walking. Greg is frustrated and cries often. Sherlock is patient.

It is a long hard road to recovery, and Greg cannot walk it. His legs fail him. That simplest of human actions – to walk – is beyond him. There is too much to coordinate – balancing on one foot, then the other, each different part of the foot, the transfer of weight, the movement of joints and feet to take step after step. He was taught all this at a young age by the man who promised to love him beyond where the stars could reach and had taken the rudimentary motor skill for granted. His movements are sloppy and uncoordinated. It takes him five minutes, with someone else holding his hands, to make ten steps.

It does not come easy. But it comes. He can take a few shaky steps before he falls over. And then he can make it across a room without anyone holding his hands. Then he can walk up and down hallways, pushing a cart. He works to re-build muscle in his legs, coordination in his mind. The frustration is beyond anything. But slowly, he learns. And Sherlock never leaves him.

One hundred percent recovery. The snow is long gone, and the weather has turned to rain again. Always a cycle. One day Greg walks home from the hospital and stumbles only twice.

Sherlock catches him each time.

* * *

That night Greg climbs the stairs to the roof of St. Bart's himself, and he does not fall. He sits down at the edge and dangles his no-longer-useless legs over the edge and helps himself to a cigarette. Sherlock sits down beside him, and they watch the stars overhead for awhile and neither says anything because they do not need to, and rooftops have never been for conversation anyways. The nightmare is over.

After awhile though, when Greg has burnt two cigarettes down the filter, and Sherlock is just starting on his third, Greg speaks.

"Thank you." he says.

Sherlock looks at him. The dark curls fall into his face, and he brushes them aside.

"You... you stuck with me." he continues. "All through that. You didn't need me anymore. You could have gone, but... you stayed." He looks down at his legs, and swings them a bit, just for the pleasure of having his legs move under his own command. "Thank you." he repeats finally, gruffly.

Sherlock nods and looks back out at the city, spread out in lights beneath them, and then up at the stars.

"You're really staying around, aren't you?" asks Greg, voicing the question he's had for awhile. Sherlock Holmes: consulting detective. It's not just a brief stint. Sherlock has his life in order now, and it seems he wants to spend it like this: with Lestrade, on rooftops.

"Yes." says Sherlock, and Lestrade is happy because a life with Sherlock on rooftops is something very beautiful indeed.

"For how long?" he asks.

Sherlock looks at him, and Greg can see the lights reflected in his eyes.

_How far do the stars go? _

"Forever." says Sherlock.

Greg looks up at the sky. "Good."

He takes a draw on his cigarette and the smoke drifts up into the infinity where the stars are spread out forever above them,a nd neither says anything more.

* * *

A/N: Part one. Reviews are love! Thanks for reading.


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